The present disclosure relates to an electrographic image forming apparatus.
Conventionally, an electrographic image forming apparatus carries out development process by supplying a toner (a developer) from a development device to an electrostatic latent image formed on a surface of a photosensitive drum or the like. The toner used in the development process is supplied from a toner case to the development device.
The above-mentioned toner case includes, for example, a case main body having a discharge port configured to discharge the toner and a shutter configured to open/close the discharge port. In the image forming apparatus including the toner case with such a configuration, there is a possibility that a cover covering the toner case is closed by erroneous operation of a worker (e.g. a user) in a situation where the shutter closes the discharge port. If such a circumstance occurs, there is a possibility of causing a trouble that image forming operation cannot be started despite the fact that the case main body contains the toner. Thereupon, there is a configuration that a manipulation portion connected to the shutter interferes with the cover so that the cover is not closed in the situation where the shutter closes the discharge port.
When the image forming apparatus is shipped, the shutter closes the discharge port in order to prevent the toner from leaking from the case main body in transit. In the above-mentioned configuration, if the toner case is installed to an apparatus main body in the situation where the shutter closes the discharge port, because the cover becomes unclosable, it is difficult to ship the image forming apparatus in a situation where the toner case is installed to the apparatus main body. Therefore, the toner case is packed separately from the apparatus main body, and accordingly, the volume and the number of the packing materials are increased and increase of a packing cost is caused.